Faith around the World

A newspaper article from the Orange County Register last Saturday focused on religion across the globe in honor of World Religion Day. Color-coordinated maps showed which parts of the world practiced which faith in the vast majorities. In terms of percentage, Christians made up 31.5% of the world’s population, Muslims 23.2%, Hindus 15%, Buddhists, 7.1%, and Jews only 0.2%. (Snibbe, News Pg. 4) Christianity and Islam, not surprisingly, are the dominate religions for a huge amount of the world. However, just because the majority of people practice these faiths in any particular country doesn’t mean that’s the only religion practiced there. This article can give a person some idea about religious diversity around the world, but certainly not a complete picture. However, the article did also listed the top ten most religious countries and the top ten most in decline in terms of religion. (Snibbe, News Pg. 4) The top three most religious were Ghana, Nigeria and Armenia. (Snibbe, News Pg. 4) Meanwhile, the countries that are most in decline were Vietnam with a 23% drop in religion, Switzerland at 21%, and France at 21%. (Snibbe, News Pg. 4) The US is 7th on this list with a drop of 13% in religion. (Snibbe, News Pg. 4) This clearly reflects how more western countries are declining in religious faith while more non-western countries continue to have strong religious ties. Whether or not western countries are rejecting religion all together or just organized religion is unknown.

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Welcome to the SOAN 232 course site

This site contains information about the University of Redlands course: "Saints, Sects, and Society", led by Professor Jim Spickard. This General Education course explores the role that religion plays in contemporary American society -- and what is happening to that role as our society changes.

Please explore our site to see what and how we are learning.

Please also visit our course blog. Each week, students post at last two substantive, thoughtful, and public comments. One is based on what we have learned in class. The other summarizes an article from the news about contemporary religion.

Anyone is welcome to comment in response. (We will delete spam and comments that are impolite, irrelevant, or not oriented toward reasoned learning.)